1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates generally to displaying information, and more specifically, to an apparatus and method for improving the amount and utility of displayed information.
2. Description of Related Art
The amount of information available to computers, such as personal computers (PCs), is growing at a phenomenal rate. Some sources claim that the internet doubles in size every six months. Computer processor power is also rapidly growing; according to some sources, doubling every 18 months. Display technology, however, has generally not improved at the same pace. A high-end monitor typically displays 1280 pixels horizontally and 1024 pixels vertically at 24 bits per pixel.
With known information display systems, such as a computer monitor, information is displayed in rectangular windows. The maximum size for a display window is the entire display screen of the monitor. If multiple windows are displayed, the size of each individual window is be considerably smaller. For example, the information displayed may comprise a text document. Words in a text document are typically displayed in one or more font sizes. As a result, the font sizes and the dimensions of the display window rectangle limit the number of words that can be made visible on the display. Conversely, to view more text on the display, a smaller font may be used, but this would make it difficult or even impossible to read the text displayed.
FIG. 1 illustrates a display device 1, such as a computer monitor, with an entire text page 2 displayed in a "page view" within a rectangular display window 3. As shown in FIG. 1, to display the entire text page 2, the font is extremely small, making the text nearly unreadable. FIG. 2 illustrates another alternative currently available for displaying text, wherein a larger sized font is used so that the text is easily read, but only a portion 4 of the entire text page 2 is displayed. A portion of the text page 2 displayed in FIG. 1 is displayed on the device 1 in FIG. 2. Since the entire text 2 from FIG. 1 cannot be made visible in its entirety when a readable-sized font is used, as illustrated in FIG. 2, it is made accessible through the use of scroll bars 5 to "move" the visible portion of the text 4 within the display window 3. The scroll bars 5 allow a user to scroll the displayed text 4 horizontally or vertically by clicking a mouse on the scroll bar 5 or by using the mouse to drag a marker 6 within the scroll bar 5, called a scroll box. The scroll boxes 6 further indicate the vertical and horizontal location of the viewed text in relation to the overall document based on the location of a scroll box 6 relative to the entire scroll bar 5.
Unfortunately, neither of the displays illustrated in FIG. 1 or FIG. 2 is satisfactory by itself. To read and manipulate given words in the text, the display of FIG. 2 is employed. To receive an indication of the relative location of the given words in relation to the entire text, the display of FIG. 1 is employed. Thus, an awkward process of toggling between the various views may be employed with known display systems.
A similar problem exists with display of video frames for digital moving pictures. Computer video, such as that coded using the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) standard (for example, MPEG-1, part 2, ISO/IEC 11172-2:1993), is made up of a series of individual video frames. Each frame is a still image, and displaying the frames in quick succession creates the illusion of motion. When editing, studying or otherwise manipulating the video frames (as opposed to viewing the moving picture), the individual still frames are typically displayed in the rectangular window 3 on the display device 1. As with text, the size of the video frame and the size of the display window 3 limit the number of frames that are visible in the display window 3 and also determine the amount of detail discernible in any given video frame. If the video frames are displayed large enough to see details within the frame, all the frames of the video are typically not visible in the display window, and the scroll bars 5 are employed to access the frames not immediately displayed. To ascertain the position of a given frame in relation to the entire video or determine the overall size of the video, the frame size may be reduced to a point where details are lost.
Thus, a need exists for a display device and method that allows a user to see a large amount of data in a display, while at the same time, maintaining the ability to view details of data that are of immediate interest.